So, I'm still grappling with the difference between Metaphysics (studying the nature of reality) and Epistemology (the study of knowledge). I've come up with something. Maybe. Is epistemology perhaps the study of reality as viewed through human experience?
posted by Lindsay at 12:15 PM
3 Comments:
Your suggestion is on the money. Maybe a specific example will also help clear things up some more.
Let's think about God again. Metaphysical claims about God include: 1. There is a God. 2. There is no God. 3. There are many gods. And so on. These are straightforward claims about what's real and what isn't. Of course, various folks (skeptics, postmodernists, or whomever) will worry about just how it is that we can make such claims, but never mind that for now.
Epistemological claims about God include: 1. Even if there is a God, we cannot know that there is a God. 2. We do know for certain that God exists. 3. We do know for certain that no God exists. 4. We do not know for certain that God exists, but we do have good evidence that God exists. And so on. Here the claims concern not reality itself but our apprehension of it.
To complicate things further, we can also make claims about language, in this case about the word "God." 1. What do we mean when we say it? 2. What does it refer to, or try to refer to, if anything? And so on.
All these questions are obviously related, yes. But there are times when it's important to be clear about exactly what you're focusing on at the moment: the thing itself (God, in this case), how and whether we have any knowledge of it or beliefs about it, or our talking about it (the word "God").
Sorry to keep harping on this, but the idea of the difference between reality and knowledge fascinates me a little. Where do questions about the nature of time fall? Epistemology or Metaphysical...ness? On the one hand, I could see it being epistemology, because our perception of time is so variable. But on the other, time itself is a constant (theoretically), so is that a type of reality?
Won't we have BOTH kinds of question about time? Questions about the real nature of time are metaphysical questions. Questions about our perception of time are epistemological. And while these questions are intimately related, can't we distinguish them, at least conceptually?
And harping on an issue is a good thing, at least in philosophy!
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